Management is the art of guiding your business and allocating people and the resources of your business where needed. However, the concepts of management and leadership are not necessarily interchangeable.

Not every manager is endowed with great leadership qualities. In fact many who are called managers are poor leaders. They are simply implementers, organisers or system supervisors who can enact the elements of a plan and follow through. Their strengths may lay in sales, systems, technical, finance, knowledge, projects or idea generation but they can still lack the essential qualities that make a good leader.

Conversely, many great leaders make poor managers. Their skill is to inspire people and enlist them to a common cause but can be very poor when it comes to control or managing the detail of implementation.

In the case of your small business, the leader is going to be you, the owner or founder. You are also the chief manager. In fact, you are likely to be performing many new roles at the start.

As an entrepreneur, you purchased or created the jobs that have to be done. There was no requirement to have training or experience in any type of leadership or business management when you bought in to your business. There is no guarantee that you will be good at it.

So regardless of whether you are the right person for the job, you are already in the job and you are unlikely to have all of the required skills. So you probably have a lot to learn right here!

Business owners and managers too often over-rely on the false belief of power they perceive they have over employees. They don’t see the need for leadership because they don’t have to. Their view is that they own the place and everyone will do as they are told! That can be an expensive business mistake to make.